


Time Spent Indoors

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Kylo Ren family feels aww yisssss, M/M, Post TFA, but then gasolina came on in the youtube playlist, grade a hux suffering as usual, this was not going to have colonel tarr in it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-11 22:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7909267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the destruction of Starkiller Base, Kylo Ren is more than prepared to spend some time hiding in wilderness hell while he postpones his return to Snoke. Hux, not so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Quadruped

The mud was shockingly warm between Hux’s toes. His feet sank in six inches, a foot, while bubbles rose to the surface and black silt swirled up about his ankles.

His lip curled in disgust as the sulphurous stench of decay hit him.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?” He glared at Ren, who did not even look at him.

“Splashing like that.” The tall, broad man picked up the fishing pole, and a good eighty feet of line whipped silently off the water with it. “It scares the fish.” 

He claimed he wasn’t using the Force to fling his tiny lure back to the still patch of calm water that was obsessing him; Hux wasn’t sure why he was still lying at this point. Their great work was gone, they’d lost their advantage over the Resistance, and now they were stranded on some backwater world where even the mud stank.

“Scaring the fish.” Hux rolled his eyes as high as he possibly could. “Ren, if you would simply take my advice and install the net across -”

“We’re not using a net.” Ren did not move his gaze from the same tiny spot on the same tiny stream where they’d been traipsing around since sunrise. The vacation cabin they’d broken into was decently stocked, definitely well enough that they could be waiting there, fully clothed, right now while they planned their next move.

“Well, this isn’t exactly helping us increase our food supplies.” Hux was ready to sit down and sulk, but they were in the middle of a buggy marsh and he had only the clothes he’d fled the base in. 

As glad as he was that his uniform wasn’t getting ruined out here, he was beginning to wish for at least the long sleeves of the jacket. This planet was infested with small, delicate insects who could and would gorge themselves on human blood until their abdomens bulged transparent with it. They seemed to prefer blood with a low midochlorian count, and out here in his shorts and undershirt Hux was the best local source of it.

“That’s not the point.” Irritation crossed Ren’s face for a moment. He picked up his line and cast it again, in a single enormous loop against the wind. “Be quiet.”

“Oh, is this some exercise Snoke has set you to?” Hux would allow Ren to fish in peace when Ren allowed him back indoors. “Are the powers of the Dark Side not awakened sufficiently by fish caught in a…”

“My uncle taught me,” Ren said.

He spoke the phrase like he spoke every other phrase, in an awkward, quiet belch of language that you had to be watching closely to catch. But Hux knew. Hux had, in fact, been there at the briefing in which he was informed that Kylo Ren had once gone by another name and that Kylo Ren would never again be referred to by that name.

That was the same briefing in which Skywalker was discussed.

“Which uncle?” Hux asked, doing his best to maintain the illusion that he hadn’t been paying rapt attention to every half-sentence uttered about Ren’s past since he’d met the man.

“The one,” Ren replied, giving a quiet nod to the river as if it were listening in.

“The one,” Hux said. “How enlightening.”

“You know who I’m talking about,” Ren said. “He was troubled, by me. He wanted to teach me. Teach me to be better.”

“Shocking,” Hux said, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes. “Clearly your personality is the very pinnacle of human development.”

Ren did not respond. Apparently, a tiny silver splash had signaled a fish taking his bait; his thin, long fishing pole was bent almost double against its effort.

Hux watched as Ren reeled the fish in - not with the silver mechanism attached to the fishing pole, of course, but by drawing the line in with his thick, clumsy fingers. His entire face contorted with focus as he kept the line taut, shifting his body as necessary to keep whatever angle seemed advantageous to him.

When he actually netted the creature, Hux could not contain himself. He laughed, a derisive barking sound that echoed off the valley’s high red walls.

“Is that it?” he said, in a tone he wished he could have used long ago with a certain senior officer. “Is that what we came here for?”

Ren did not respond. He was murmuring something indistinct to the fish, which might have been six or seven inches in length. When he was finished, he picked the helpless creature up in his big, clumsy hands…

...and deposited it back in the stream, where it disappeared with a flash of silver no more substantial than the one in which it had appeared.p

“What the fuck!” The words spilled out of Hux’s chest much in the way they would have spilled out of Ren’s: suddenly, quickly, and much too loud. A swarm of avians took off from a nearby tree, tittering as they formed into a winged cloud.

Ren said nothing, just lowered his brows at Hux.

“What the literal fuck, Ren!” Hux came stomping through the water.

“Don’t scare -”

“It doesn’t matter if I scare the fish, evidently!” Hux advanced on Ren with his fists closed. “We’re not going to eat them, apparently, which given their caloric value I wouldn’t care about if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve been out here chasing them for three! Fucking! Hours!” The sucking mud gave way to coarse gravel as he neared his co-commander. He willed the pain away from his face as he planted his index finger on Ren’s chest. “Now, I am going to give you two choices,” he said. “One. We can install a net across the stream at the point I suggested, which will ideally…”

Ren looked away suddenly, his dark eyes focused on some point downstream. “Hux,” he said.

“No, Ren,” he said. “You’re going to listen--”

“Hux.” Ren’s voice grew softer, and his eyes grew wider. Was that - was that fear twisting the fresh scar on his face?

Hux turned to look at what Ren was so concerned about. The thin, whippy trees were so thick around this stream, and the forest in the valley above them was so dark, that - 

“Run.”

Hux had never heard that much fear in Ren’s voice. Nor had he ever seen him move so quickly away from a potential fight. Though his mind was perplexed by the situation, his body knew exactly what to do: he took off sprinting after Ren, jabbing his bare feet on the rocks and scraping his bare legs with the undergrowth.

“Here!” Ren beckoned toward a coniferous tree that loomed large at the edge of the forest. Was he? He was, he was going to climb it.

“Quickly!” Ren said, looking down briefly at Hux, and then at whatever was rustling the vegetation around the stream.

Again, Hux’s body was in much more of a hurry than his brain was. He bolted to the tree, began scrambling up its height branch by branch.  
“What...is...that?” he gasped as he grappled closer to Ren.

Ren was staring intently down at the black mass of creature that was crashing through the underbrush. “I’m not sure,” he said.

Hux watched in horror as an enormous jet-black quadruped, armed at the head with a pair of sprawling bony growths that were like horns, clubs, and paddles all in one. It roared as it charged the tree; the entire trunk shook when the creature’s skull collided with it.

“It’s insane,” Hux said.

“It’s an herbivore.” Ren nodded, watching the beast bellow again and return to the tree with another assault that made Hux cling for dear life to his branch. “It won’t stop until we’re dead.”

“What?” Hux blinked at the taller man. “You just said, it’s…”

“They don’t kill because they have to,” said Kylo Ren as he watched the furious quadriped make bellowing circles around the tree. “A vornskyr, or a shanga, or even a rathtar will only attack prey they know they can bring down easily. They have to kill frequently. They save their energy.”

Something clouded his face as he spoke the last couple of sentences. Hux had to wonder what part of Snoke’s curriculum had involved these lessons in predation - or, indeed, if this was something Ren had studied because he was Ren.

“But herbivores don’t -”

“No,” Ren said. “Herbivores don’t have to kill.” He shifted his position as the quadruped landed another blow on the tree. “They kill to maintain control,” he said. “Over their territory.”

He gave Hux a long, flat stare at that; Hux was suddenly struck with the memory of his own voice screaming a call to arms, the feeling of a world erupting in red…

...and then the feeling passed. Hux blinked, shook his head.

The quadriped struck the tree again, and this time instead of vibrating the trunk shifted a little, just to the northeast.

“Can’t you do something?” Hux said, climbing higher. “Can’t you use the…”

“The Force won’t be enough,” Ren said.

“Do you even know what that thing is?” If this tree fell back into the forest, perhaps there would be a chance they could escape into another one. Hux needed to get higher. He scrambled upward, grasped at a branch - and when it broke, he yelped with a sudden terror.

But he did not fall. Kylo Ren had reached down to grasp him by the upper arm. He hauled him upward, sat him in his lap like he some kind of back-system dabo girl.

“Do you have your blaster?” he said.

“Of course I have my blaster,” Hux said, drawing the weapon that seemed so little comfort now. “How’s that going to help?”

“Fire into those trees.” Ren pointed to their east. “We might be able to distract…” 

He paused. Like an animal scenting something far away, he tipped his head slightly to one side.

“Someone’s coming,” he said.

“Oh, it has a family!” Hux heard his voice squeak the way it hadn’t in years. “Fantasti -”

“A speeder,” Ren said. “Maybe a hunter.”

“A hunter…” Hux’s heart was beginning to pound in his chest. The quadruped made another run at the tree. Again, he could feel the trunk shift in the dirt. “Hey!” he yelled. “Help! Somebody! Help! Over here!”

The speeder’s engine drifted off into the distance.

“They won’t come,” Ren said. “Aim for the rock. You might distract it.”

“You can’t use mind control or whatever it is you do on a dumb animal?” Hux aimed his blaster at a spot some fifty yards away. He fired three shots into the hillside. It was enough to raise some smoke, but not enough to distract the quadriped from its grim business.

“I’m trying,” Ren replied. “This...isn’t what I’m trained for.”

“You can’t control the mind of a kriffing -”

“Woo-HOOOO!” 

Hux heard the roar of a landspeeder engine accelerating well above spec, saw a puff of smoke at about the area where Kylo Ren had first dragged him into this fishing expedition.

The quadruped was undeterred. It charged. The tree shifted.

“I know that engine,” Ren said. “That’s a First Order -”

“Over here!” A man’s voice was calling out in the woods - Hux could have sworn he knew it, but could not say where from. “Hang on!”

“Fuck you!”

Hux almost choked on his own tongue. He definitely knew that voice. To hear it again...he had thought her dead. He had thought her dead, and yet here she was, and she was coming to save him.

“Is that - “

Ren didn’t get to finish the sentence before two figures on landspeeders came tearing up the valley.

The quadriped stopped in its tracks. It turned to watch the two speeders circling around it. Their riders were clad head to toe in grey and black camouflage, with masks over their faces.

One of them signaled with their hand and started moving toward the quadriped; the other pulled a heavy-grade rifle off their back.

Hux held his breath.

The quadriped did not take lightly this intrusion into its personal space. It lowered its massive wattled head at the figure on the speeder, pawed at the ground in front of it.

The figure on the speeder revved the engine.

At this,. The quadriped could take no more. It charged with a roar, dashing across the meadow and giving the rider with the gun a chance to shoot. They shot once, twice, three times at the beast’s heart - and it collapsed running, letting out a final roar of pain and exhaustion.

“Oh, thank the maker,” Hux said. He shoved himself away from Kylo’s grip and scrambled back down the tree, ignoring the scrape of the branches against his skin. He wondered how long it had been since he had been this sparsely dressed outdoors. Had he ever gone out planetside in shorts?

As soon as his feet were on the ground, he was hurrying toward the speeders, trying to smile in a friendly fashion at them.

“Good afternoon!” He waved. “I see you heard our cries for help,” he said. “I must thank you for..”

“General Hux?” One of the speeder riders removed their mask, and her face matched her voice. Captain Phasma was hovering in front of him, a mix of delight and bewilderment on her features. “Is that...it’s you! You survived!”

“Of course I survived,” he said. “It’s my job.”

“Is Ren with you?” she said, looking around the meadow.

“He’s still in the tree, I think,” Hux said. “Ren! Ren, it’s Phasma!”

“It’s me, I promise!” Phasma laughed a little as she called out to him; her voice was suspiciously loose. “Come on down and have some of our beer!”

“Hello, General.”

Hux’s blood ran cold at the sound of the second voice. His shoulders stiffened. He had last heard the second voice at the most unfortunate gala ever to be held upon the Finalizer, and he had hoped to never hear it again.

He turned around.

Colonel William Tarr smiled down at him from the speeder, a bottle of beer in each hand. “I must thank you for your assistance,” he said, leaning down to offer one of the bottles to Hux. “Whatever the kriff these things are, they’re impossible to get a shot at without someone playing the part of live bait.”

Hux took the beer. He was aware, at this point, that it wouldn’t do to go making any more enemies. “Are there other survivors here from Starkiller Base?”

“Oh, a few,” Tarr said. “None who are too eager to see what punishment lies in store for them.”

“Are you implying we’re hiding here?” Hux’s eyebrows shot up his forehead.

“Oh, of course not, General.” Tarr’s tight-lipped smile ignited a rage deep within Hux’s gut. “I’m sure you and Kylo Ren are, ah, extraordinarily eager to return to the Supreme Leader. I’m certain he has nothing but good intentions for the two of you.”

Hux supposed it was a good thing his hands were not strong enough to shatter glass.

Tarr shrugged, used a gap in the speeder’s siding to pop the cap off his beer. “Oh, good,” he said, looking off to the treeline. “Darth Broody’s come down from the tree. I’m sure we’re about to have a fabulous afternoon.”

Hux clutched his own bottle, suddenly aware that Tarr meant damn good and well for him to have to ask him to open it. He stared at the fallen quadriped and sighed. Perhaps it would have been better if he had kept his mouth shut just now.


	2. Under the Influence

They had found the cabin within a few hours of landing, which made Hux suspect that Ren knew more of their location than his wordless shrugs would convey. It was a small, plain building, about twelve foot by twenty, constructed of rough-cut logs and roofed with red corrugated durasteel.

It was a short journey from their treetop retreat. It would have been even shorter by landspeeder, had Hux not been obliged to ride on the back of one while he clung to its arrogant, irresponsible, thrill-seeking pilot.

Colonel Tarr had, ostensibly, been trained for years upon years in the finer points of piloting. Hux, who was personally acquainted with the vast majority of the training program that had produced Tarr, knew for a fact it did not encourage pilots to aim at obstacles for the express purpose of pulling away at the last minute.

Nor did it encourage pilots to push the specs of their vehicles, especially while having some asinine contest with an old friend regarding who could do the most technically inadvisable thing with their speederbike. Extra-especially in between bottles of very expensive, very strong Galagian ale.

“We’ve only got three left, General,” Colonel Tarr said as he slowed the speeder down and removed an oversized bottle from the bag slung across his pommel. He tossed it to Phasma, who leaned so far to catch it she nearly toppled her speeder.

“Fuck’s sake, Tarr!” she said with a grin. Her cheeks and nose were flushed with drink, though she had not yet managed to lose Ren against a canyon wall or a tree branch. “You can always hand it to me!”

Ren was hunched silently behind her, glaring daggers at Tarr. If he objected to their rescuers’ choice of afternoon entertainment, he had made no remark about it.

“Gen-er-all,” Tarr said, grinning back at Hux as he waved a bottle in front of him. “Liquid carbohydrate!”

“With probiotics!” Phasma said as she popped her beer open. “It’s good for you, sir!”

“Look.” Tarr reached down to pop the cap off between two body panels. “You don’t even need an opener.”

“Give me that.” Hux snatched the beer away from the TIE Fighter pilot and took a long, angry drink. He didn’t like beer. He especially didn’t like sweet, syrupy beer Dattoo insisted on spending three percent of the recreation budget on. But he soldiered on. It was his job.

“Holy shit, sir,” Phasma said.

“He just keeps going…”

Phasma giggled. “Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!”

It was like she’d initiated some Ewok ritual. Tarr joined in the chant as Hux choked down the carbonated grain syrup, and the two of them only got louder as Hux found it harder not to spew expensive beer all over the Colonel’s landspeeder.

By the time all of the beer was in Hux’s stomach, he wanted very badly for it to be out again. He shut his eyes and wondered if he could aim for Tarr’s lap from this position.

“Are you all right, sir?” Phasma said, with the justifiable concern of someone who’d seen Hux betrayed by his constitution before. “Will!”

Colonel Tarr giggled, actually giggled, as he revved the speeder’s engine and took off with a rate of acceleration more appropriate to space artillery than to a speeder. Hux heard himself shriek with terror as he clutched Tarr about his waist.

“Wiiiiiiill!” Phasma yelled, shrieking up behind them on her speeder with Kylo Ren clamped onto her back. “Wiiiiiillll!”

With another wild laugh, Tarr braked and banked hard enough to send Hux pitching over to one side.

“What are you doing?” Hux said.

“You’ll see!” Tarr made another inadvisable turn in the other direction, and Hux saw what he was looking at.

They had followed the creekbed down to a larger river. When Tarr rounded the corner, Hux could see the wide, slate-gray expanse of the water making its way downward for one hundred, two hundred meters.

And then it disappeared over the edge of a cliff.

“Colonel, what exactly makes you think that…”

“A TIE Fighter pilot doesn’t think,” Tarr said. “He acts!”

The engine shrieked as Tarr sped down the riverway. Hux shut his eyes - whatever they were doing was doubtlessly reasonably safe, provided you were in the care of a pilot of some thirty-odd years of exp…

The engine died. 

The speeder started dropping.

Beside them, Hux could hear the sound of tons of water falling from a high cliff.

“Oh, fu-”

The engine roared back to life, and Hux screamed like a frightened child as Tarr launched them forward down the river.

Phasma and Ren were close behind them; Phasma was hollering with delight, one fist raised in the air. When she saw Hux, her eyes widened with concern. She pulled up in front of Tarr and halted her speeder, causing Tarr to do the same with evident reluctance.

“General,” she said, motoring slowly toward him. “Are you all right, sir?”

Hux released his arms’ grip around Colonel Tarr, though he kept a handful of his jacket clenched in one hand for safety’s sake. “I’m fine,” he said. “Although when we return to Leader Snoke, I will recommend a psychological eval...eval…”

He felt his throat warning him and bent away from Phasma. He supposed it didn’t matter, at this point, that he was retching in front of the two people in the galaxy he least wanted to see him in this state. They had already seen him in his underwear, clinging to a treetop for dear life. They were currently seeing him in his underwear, clinging to his least favorite officer in the First Order for dear life.

“I hate you,” he said, panting at the soiled ground below Tarr’s speederbike. “I hate all three of you, and I’m going back to Leader Snoke alone.”

 

***  
The inside of the cabin was about as extravagant as the outside. There were a couple of beds against one wall, and there was a kitchen setup along another. The pantry was well-stocked with the kind of victuals you’d expect in a vacation home, seldom used: freeze-dried vegetable packs, boilable grains in hermetically sealed buckets. He even saw a couple pallets of capsule noodles, much to his delight.

And, yes, there were several bottles of quality whisky. Tarr had now found all of them. They wouldn’t be long for this galaxy.

He and Phasma had shucked off their hunting gear in favor of their long tights once they made a trip back for the quadriped’s carcass. They were singing something infectiously happy outside, waving their skinning knives at each other as they processed their kill.

Hux, for his part, was content to sit on the bed while he took advantage of the capsule noodle situation. He and Ren had managed to spare the gin from the Colonel’s attentions; it sat halfway up the stairs to the loft.

Ren was looking down at him from the wooden platform that boasted a couple of sparse bedrolls and a music player beneath the cabin’s top window. He had a curious expression on his pale face - not necessarily hostile, but deeply suspicious nonetheless.

Hux could only take so much of this. Once he was finished with his capsule noodles, he had no distraction but the gin. And once he finished with the gin, he had little choice but to get up and return to the bottle.

“Did it bother you?” Ren could not, of course, let him pass so close to his territory without saying something.

“Did what bother me?” Hux didn’t look at him as he poured himself another glass of gin. “A lot of bothersome things have happened, and…”

“We were both nearly killed,” Ren said. “By an animal. Some kind of bantha-type creature.”

“Frankly, I’m more irritated that we were rescued by William Tarr,” Hux said.

“But Phasma came back to us.” Ren’s mouth twitched. “She survived.”

“Yes, and now thanks to you, she despises me.”

“She despises us both,” Ren said. “She always has. I can feel it.”

Hux looked up at Ren; his throat grew tight at the thought of what he said being true. He knew that Phasma held no special soft regard for him, but he liked to think...well. He liked to think a lot of things, didn’t he?

“Phasma’s always been loyal to the First Order,” Hux said.

“As has Tarr,” Ren replied.

Hux scowled at his glass of gin and returned to the table. “Colonel Tarr is from a different age than ours,” he said. “He has less faith than we do in the First Order’s strength, which, for him may be understandable.”

“You agree with him, then.” Kylo Ren’s voice was mocking. “You don’t think we’ll prevail,” he said. “Against the Resistance.”

“No, Ren,” Hux said. “What I mean to say is that I’m well aware of the manner in which Tarr was introduced to the First Order, and I understand why that sort of introduction might breed skepticism.” He took a drink of gin, looked outside the window. 

Tarr and Phasma were conversing now; he held the carcass steady while she cut a chunk of meat from the back. They were skewering portions on a long, sharp branch and hanging it over a smoky fire. Hux assumed this was some kind of field preservation method, and not in fact an actual Ewok ritual.

“You think he’s convinced Phasma?” Ren said.

“I think you turned Phasma against me because you saw her as a threat,” Hux said. “You knew she was in my quarters as often as you were - it didn’t matter to you what she was doing there.”

“I did nothing,” Ren said. “If you turned against Phasma…”

“I don’t want to discuss this, Ren,” Hux said. He took another drink and looked up at the sulking figure above him. “I want to find out how we are going to find my Senior Staff again and return to Leader Snoke.”

“Tapikk is dead,” Ren said. “Mitaka is dead. Yang and Chata…”

“There was more than one escape pod on our shuttle,” Hux said. “Tapikk survived both Death Stars.”

“So you say.” Ren’s mouth twitched upward a little in a half-smile.

“So I say.” Hux stood up and straightened his back. Without another glance at Ren, he went to the cabin door and ventured outside into the territory of Phasma and Tarr.

***

By the time Phasma had stripped all the flesh from the quadruped’s bones, it had gotten cold enough that Tarr built a large, warm fire between the cabin and the smoking fire. Hux sat on a stump beside it, drinking whisky while he watched the two helmet-heads get cleaned up.

He didn’t like the way that Tarr kept looking at him, then looking at Phasma, as if he were only waiting for her permission to return to making Hux’s life a living hell.

“Well?” he said, after nearly twenty minutes of drinking in silence.

“Well, what?” Phasma took a swig of her liquor.

“Are the two of you going to explain to us how you got here?” Hux gestured to the ground before him. “Or shall I guess?”

Phasma shrugged, looking at the pile of bones beneath the tree. “I was ambushed,” she said. “Got thrown in a trash compactor and found my way out.”

“She got into-”

“I found a TIE Fighter,” Phasma snapped at Tarr. “This son of a bitch came looking for survivors and found me drifting after a few days in space. Brought me back here to recuperate, decide whether I want to go back and face Snoke after this.”

“Ah.” Hux sneered at the fighter pilot. “And I’m sure your commanders are very pleased you took off for an unauthorized mission.”

“The Green Eighteenth is in good hands,” Tarr said. “I owed Phasma a couple of favors.”

“A couple.” The smile was creeping back onto Phasma’s face.

“How about yourself?” Tarr picked up a stump with his free hand and set it down on the ground across from Hux. “Lord Ren looks a little, ah, what’s the word…”

“Did someone finally get him with a left-hand underblock and stick his stupid hilt guards back in his own face?” Phasma had no need of a stump; she squatted on the ground, her bottle-bearing arm slung across one knee. “I always told him that was going to happen one day.”

“I don’t know what happened to Ren,” Hux said. It was mostly true - Ren refused to speak of what had given him the injuries that had put him in a bacta tank for so long. “All I know is that it changed him.”

“Did it make him less of a jealous prick?” Phasma said; but she seemed to recoil from the words as soon as they left her mouth.

“Jealous?” Tarr grinned, leaning in toward Hux with his eyes glittering. “Ooh, that does explain-”

“It explains nothing,” Hux growled. “Lord Ren is merely...unstable. I’m unsure if he’s fit to return to Leader Snoke at this point.”

“General, he was unstable when Snoke found him,” Phasma said. “If he seems different to you know, it’s because he trusts you.”

Hux stared at her long and hard. He’d never told her about the other person who came to visit him in his personal quarters. He’d never told her precisely why Kylo Ren had become so fixated on destroying the non-Ren parts of Hux’s personal life.

But, if he was close enough to her to turn her against Hux…

He drained his whisky glass. “What did he tell you?” he asked Phasma.

Tarr let out a low chuckle. “This is going to be good,” he said.

“Shut up, Colonel,” Phasma said, standing up and walking toward Hux with the bottle. “Do you really want to know what he told me?”

“Why not?” Hux forced a smile on his face as Phasma filled his glass. “I’m already drunk and in hell.”


	3. Sorry (I ain't sorry)

Hux had never really watched wood burn. In the later stages, it took on a rather skeletal appearance; the flame moved between bone-like segments in the form of a red glow, rather than yellow tongues.

 

And then Tarr dropped a fresh log on the fire, and Hux jumped as the whole thing exploded.

 

“Easy, boy,” Tarr said, grinning down at Hux.

 

The words were ready; they were called for; they were struggling to escape Hux’s mouth. But he was well enough acquainted with Tarr that he didn’t want to find out what clever retort he had for any version of ‘don’t call me boy.’ 

 

Fortunately, the look on Phasma’s face was enough to make him roll his eyes and slink back to his stump.

 

“Anyway,” she said, looking down into her half-full bottle of whisky. “After you and him went in on that Resistance prisoner...I don’t know, sir,” she said. “It was like…”

 

“Oh, please,” Hux said. “We did not ‘go in’ on anything. He handed me a blaster and  _ dared me _ …”

 

“All right, General,” Colonel Tarr said. “You  _ cooperated in the termination of a known criminal _ . Does that sound better?”

 

Hux opened his mouth to say something, then turned back to Phasma.

 

“Anyway,” he said.

 

“Anyway.” Phasma gave him an exhausted smile. “Prisoner, ah yes...how do I put this, sir?” She looked at the ground, took a long drink, then gave Hux a long, level glance. “He started becoming obsessed, sir. He’d ask when we were sparring: do you fight with Hux? Is he a good fighter? Has he ever bloodied his own hands? Do you clash over the stormtrooper program?”

 

“Ahh,” Tarr said, grinning and leaning back on one arm. “I rem-”

 

“Shut up, Colonel,” Phasma said. “You’re about to become part of the story.”

 

“Oh, am I?” The pilot put a hand over his smiling lips. “How intriguing.”

 

Phasma gave him a cold, steady stare. There was no mirth on her face. She took another long drink, looked at Hux, looked back at Tarr.

 

“Do you have any idea,” she said to the fighter pilot, “how close Kylo Ren came to killing you? How much he  _ wanted  _ to kill you?”

 

“I assume that man won’t be happy until he’s the only human left alive,” said Colonel Tarr. “I doubt you and Hux are exceptions.”

 

Phasma said nothing to that. She just stared, mouth scrunched in a bitter frown, between her knees for a few seconds, then shook her head. “Anyway,” she said. “That was the night I suspected...I don’t know. I assumed you two were already, ah, involved, at that point, but I didn’t mention…you know...”

 

“What’s the first infraction punishment for homosexual behavior, again?” Tarr gave Hux a direct look that came with a bitter smile. “Mandatory reconditioning after...how many days of solitary…”

 

“I did not write that policy,” Hux said.

 

“You signed that policy, General,” Tarr said. “You delivered the official announcement, General. You…”

 

“Tarr, I swear to the  _ void _ … _ ” _

 

“When  _ did  _ you sign that policy, General?” Tarr snapped his shoulders, took a swig of his whisky. “The policy you didn’t write. When  _ did  _ you sign it? Do you remember?”

 

“There are  _ sacrifices  _ we have to make, Colonel, if we want to see the First Order triumph over the chaos that has consumed the galaxy,” Hux said. His voice was difficult to manage; he thought he could hear his consonants slurring together. “The prohibition on homosexual behavior is currently a  _ practical necessity… _ ”

 

“And what about Kylo Ren’s cock, General?” Tarr said. “What kind of a necessity--”

 

“Colonel--”

 

“You’re  _ out of line _ !” Hux roared, rising to his feet so fast his head swam. “It is none of your concern,  _ Colonel,  _ what transpires between your superiors in the hours…”

 

“General,  _ please--” _

 

“Superiors, my ass!” Colonel Tarr was standing now, just about standing on top of Hux, leaning down so he was growling right into his face. “You’re a couple cream-faced fucking business boys playing Space Captain with the lives of grown men twice as qualified as you are.”

 

“Grown men?” Hux did not back down or even blink. “You’re nothing but a drunken schoolboy with a receding hairline--”

 

“ _ Gentlemen!”  _

 

“Oh, we’ve one after my hair,” Tarr said, stepping back with his hands above his head. “I can’t fight you, General. You’re a little bitch and it wouldn’t be--”   
  


Hux didn’t have a verbal response to that. At ‘little bitch,’ his bottle of whisky just kind of flew at Tarr’s face of his own accord. He didn’t lose grip of the neck, even after it had smashed against the fighter pilot’s cheekbone. It was good to have a weapon.

 

Very good, in fact, because Tarr was very large and very fast, even in this drunken state. His left fist came from nowhere and sent him staggering back; he managed to catch his balance just in time to charge him with a false right and then knee him in the balls as hard as he could.

 

But Tarr only roared in rage and grabbed Hux by his collar.

 

“You forget.” He punched him full in the face, threw him on the ground. “ _ General.” _

 

Hux rolled over, and Tarr didn’t come down fully on him, but he was close enough that he could grab him again and start punching him in the face again.

 

“I don’t…”

 

His nose had to be broken. 

 

“Have…”

 

He could hear his voice yelling for help, or maybe yelling for Tarr to stop. His head was swimming; was this how it was going to be? Was this how Armitage Hux met his end?

 

“Balls.”

 

***

 

He thought that maybe he’d had worse hangovers than this. But he was planetside, and he’d just been beaten half to death by a crazed fighter pilot. It was really hard to judge how much of his pain and how much of it was the whisky.

 

The first time he woke, he emptied his stomach into a bucket some kind soul (probably Phasma or Mitaka - no, not Mitaka, Mitaka was dead, Mitaka and Tapikk and Yang were dead. They were dead. He was never going to see them again)

 

-emptied his stomach into a bucket that some kind soul had left beside his bed. He then realized that he was in a bed, and that last he’d checked he’d been lying on his back on the ground, on the receiving end of Colonel Tarr’s wrath.

 

He assumed Phasma had brought him inside. It was nice to fantasize, of course, that Kylo Ren had been awakened by the sound of the fight and had ended Tarr’s existence once and for all. But it was likely that he’d simply continued ignoring the people he was stranded with.

 

The second time he woke, he was desperate for water. He stood up and sat down, leaned over the bucket some kind soul, maybe Tapikk or Mitaka…

 

They were dead. They were dead, he reminded himself. They were dead and he would not see them again, would not drink with them again. They would never look at him, would never speak to him again. It was his fault. He’d killed them.

 

He’d killed them. It had been such a long time since he’d wept, since he’d felt his breath rasping into him like this. He’d killed them, he’d let them down, they’d put their lives in his hands, and he’d let them die.

 

He put his head in his hands and let it happen, clutching his hair with his fingertips and leaning over the bucket some kind soul had left by his bedside. He’d done this; he’d done all of this. It was all his fault. He couldn’t undo it.

 

“Hey, kid, you okay?” a gentle voice, a man’s voice, somewhere in this room. Where was he? Where was Ren?

 

The wheels turning in his mind had sped up too fast to stop now. Hux could not have stopped his weeping if Grand Moff Tarkin had returned from the dead and told him to be quiet. His sobs were the smaller expression of a scream that could not be produced with human vocal equipment; his grief was a horror too profound to describe with human speech.

 

“Hey, kid,” said the voice, and Hux knew it was Tarr, and the wheels seemed to spin faster. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t--couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.

 

Hux found the bucket and retched until he could no longer.

 

“Oh, shit,” Tarr said. “Hey--hey, General, are you okay?”

 

It took Hux a few seconds to gather enough wits to form a single word. That word was “Leave.”

 

“I’m gonna get you some water, okay?” Tarr’s voice was halfway between a whisper and quiet speech. “Just...I’ll leave, just let me get you some water.” 

 

The third time Hux woke up, the gray light of dawn was showing through the cabin’s top window. Hux could smell smoke, something cooking. He could hear sizzling coming from the stove.

 

His head was pounding. He half-looked, half-felt around for his water, took a cautious sip. When it failed to come back up, he took another.

 

Then, he sat up.

 

The cabin was empty, save for him and Colonel Tarr. The fighter pilot was standing in front of the stove; next to him was a chaotic mess that indicated he’d attempted to prepare breakfast.

“What’s going on?” Hux said. He sat on the bed, made sure he was still wearing clothes. “What...where’s Ren? Where’s Phasma?”

 

“Morning, General,” said Colonel Tarr. “How do you like your caf?”

 

“I typically like it after I’ve been informed of where my co-commanders are,” Hux said. “I know your apology for last night is going to be half-assed at best, so I would appreciate it if you’d give me the information I could actually  _ use _ .”

 

“Uhmm…” Tarr attended to something at the stove. “Well, General,” he said. “I might want to reconsider that policy if I were you.”

 

“What the fuck are you talking about, Colonel?” Hux stood up, stretched his legs. His stomach seemed to be in the process of forgiving him for last night’s abuse.

 

“Well, ah.” Tarr licked his lips as he turned to face Hux. He had found an apron - a precious little thing with ruffles and a dot pattern - to put over his long tights, and he wore a padded mitt over the hand that wasn’t holding some kind of bread-torturing implement. “Well, see, you ask a very interesting question, General,” he said.

 

Something told Hux he needed to be worrying more than he was. “Colonel,” he said. “Where are Ren and Phasma?”

 

“A  _ very  _ interesting question,” Colonel Tarr said. “And one with several answers.”

 

“Colonel!”

 

“I have no idea.” Tarr put his hands up, backed up against the stove. “I  _ do  _ know she is probably safe, since she has both of our blasters.”

 

“She has our  _ what!”  _ Hux said. “She--fuck.  _ Fuck _ , she knows she can’t use my blaster! She  _ knows,  _ Colonel! She knows it’s coded to my fingerprints!”

 

“She probably...wait,  _ what?”  _ A peculiar expression came over Tarr’s face - not quite horror, not quite amusement. “You had it coded... _ why? _ ”

 

“For security, Colonel!” Hux said. “Which we do not currently  _ have,  _ Colonel, because Phasma took both our fucking blasters!”

 

“Well...yes. Yes, she took our blasters, and the fishing equipment, and the...the Ren.” Tarr heaved a long sigh. “And also all of our alcohol.”

 

“Fucking kriff!”

 

“But she left us one very important thing,” Tarr said. “One which could potentially make this situation into a positive experience for…”

 

“If you say ‘our friendship’ I will strangle you with my bare hands, Colonel Tarr,” Hux said.

 

“Oh, kriff, no, I despise you with every fiber of my being,” Colonel Tarr replied. “That being said, she  _ did  _ leave us the other landspeeder.”

  
“Excellent.” Hux sat back down on his bed. “I was hoping that this situation could somehow get worse.” 


End file.
